This invention relates to a cinching strap and method used to cinch any kind of coiled matter, such as cord, hose, rope, wire, cable, etc., to prevent it from tangling during storage.
The problem of tangling is familiar to homeowners, contractors, and anyone who uses any kind of cord, hose, or rope. Using an extension cord by way of example only, a cord is typically coiled into small loops in preparation for storage of the cord between times when the cord is used. After the cord has been coiled, however, the cord can become tangled unless the loops can be securely cinched together to hold them in place. Such tangling can occur after even the most careful user has coiled the cord and prepared to store until its next use.
While cinching straps presently exist to store coiled cords, these cinching straps do not sufficiently cinch the coiled cord to prevent it from tangling. For example, hook-and-loop material (i.e., Velcro.RTM.) strips have been looped around a coiled cord to cinch it in place. These strips have several major drawbacks in such an application. First, they are not easily adjusted after initial contact is made between the hook side of the strip and the loop side of the strip. Once contact is made between the two sides of the hook-and-loop material, there is no readily available manner to further tighten the cinch to prevent tangling. This leaves some room within the cinch for the individual sections of the cord to move around and become tangled with other sections of the cord. In addition, hook-and-loop material can sometimes become connected to other materials in close proximity. For example, the edges and ends of a hook-and-loop strip looped around a coiled cord can connect to work cloths, articles of clothing, and other such fabrics. Such contact can eventually ruin many fabrics as well as reduce the cinching effectiveness of the hook-and-loop material. More importantly, the hook-and-loop material can caught on any variety of objects and become disconnected. Finally, hook-and-loop material loses its effectiveness after it has frozen or gotten wet. Moisture and cold reduces the ability of the "hook" side to attach to the "loop" side. Therefore, these hook-and-loop strips have proved ineffective in many applications where they are intended to be used.
Other mechanisms used for cinching cords and such include basic nylon straps with metal or plastic buckles and plastic cord reels (and other plastic devices) intended for hanging and storing such coiled cords. These cinching straps have many of the same problems described above.
A need also has arisen to fasten a cinching strap to a cord even while the cord is not being cinched so that the cinching strap cannot be separated or lost from the cord. It is also important that the device be fastened to the cord in a way that does not interfere with the use of the cord. Finally, the fastening device must also allow the cinching strap to be easily accessed when the user of the cord desires to coil and store the cord.
Until the present invention, there has not been a satisfactory method and apparatus to keep coiled matter from tangling when attempting to either use the cord or store it until its next use.